The Genocide in South Ossetia

The death toll is in for South Ossetia, where Russia accused Georgia of genocide, citing the murder of more than 1,500 civilians for a humanitarian invasion of Georgia.

The figure appears to be about four dozen. Quoting a hospital where virtually all the dead appear to have been taken, since the morgue was without electricity, The Wall Street Journal's Andrew Osborn puts the figure at 45; and Human Rights Watch says it was about 44. There may have been an additional few victims whose bodies did not reach the hospital.

O and G readers from the State Department and elsewhere have written me privately that they regard Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as reckless, irrational, and megalomaniacal. They and others I trust regard Saakashvili with opprobrium for bringing on Russia's wrath.

That Russia would defend South Ossetia was certain. But increasing evidence makes the attack look well pre-planned, not spontaneous. And the authentic death toll makes the justification appear to be a pretext for that attack.

I had a Skype call from Tbilisi tonight from Lawrence Sheets, with whom I reported from the Caucasus from 1992 through 2003. He was then with Reuters; now he's the regional representative for the International Crisis Group.

Sheets says that he's pored over the events leading up to the fighting, and says that Saakashvili was left with a choice on August 7th -- allow a devastating South Ossetian attack on Georgian villages adjacent to the regional capital of Tskhinvali, or stop it. And Saakashvili decided to stop it. Sheets doesn't regard that as reckless.

The course of events make it appear that the West may countenance both effective Russian annexation of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, under the guise of a form of independence, and occupation of swaths of Georgia proper. The best scenario seems to be only temporary occupation before a permanent imposition of the former -- the annexation part.

We got a picture of what that occupation could look like, at least for now, in the Georgian city of Gori today. Under the watchful eyes of Russian soldiers sitting on tanks, a paramilitary soldier stole two new SUVs belonging to United Nations officials, then dispersed them and journalists by firing into the air. As described by Yaroslav Trofimov, my former Wall Street Journal colleague, three of the U.N. officials escaped by jumping into his car, which then sped away.

Huffing and Puffing in Georgia

With so much hyperbole flowing in the conflict in Georgia -- on numbers of casualties, on the aims of the opposing sides -- where should one focus one's attention?

I remain tuned to Georgia proper, and not South Ossetia itself, or even the town of Gori to the south that has been bombed by Russian jets.

Specifically, Georgia claims that Russian naval carriers are in position off Georgia's Black Sea coast, and are readying to offload troops. If accurate -- I've seen no confirmation -- and these troops do occupy ground in Georgia itself, and not simply within the pro-Moscow separatist enclave of Abkhazia, this will be a different war. This would be Russia declaring who is in charge, a message that would be intended not just for Georgia, but for the West, which has been considering absorbing Georgia into NATO.

It would be the same were the scores of Russian troop carriers reported to have poured into South Ossetia to cross into Georgia proper.

A far more remote possibility would be Russian bombing of the trans-Georgian oil or natural gas pipelines. Georgia claims that Russia has already targeted -- but missed hitting -- the 1,000-mile Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, but I doubt the account. Such an attack would be regarded in the West as a direct assault on Western interests.

As long as the conflict remains in and around South Ossetia, the fighting can be seen as a bloody uptick in the Caucasus version of huffing and puffing. But it is containable.

Georgia and Russia: Itching for a Fight, Now They Have One

At O and G, we usually ignore the crude language, or errantly fired shot, of the various hotheads in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The forecasts of possible calamity are almost always alarmist.

Today's flareup of direct combat between Russian and Georgian forces is not one of these cases. Remember the events and language that preceded Vladimir Putin's 1999 burn-the-fields, raze-the-cities offensive on Chechnya, and read this quote today from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev: “I am obligated to defend the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they are located. We will not allow the unpunished killing of our fellow citizens. Those who are guilty will suffer the punishment they deserve.”

Georgia and the South Ossetians had already been fighting for a year or more when I moved to Tbilisi in 1992, and the hostilities never really halted. The Ossetians rightly bristled at Georgia's misplaced nationalism, and broke away. Then, Moscow -- forever looking for a pretext to express its contempt for Georgia -- glommed onto the South Ossetian cause, granting them Russian passports and citizenship.

Times have changed. Current Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is not one with Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the early-1990s Georgian supremist whose rantings helped to trigger Georgia's loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Yet the fighting goes on. Recent back-and-forth shooting between the Georgians and the Ossetians escalated today in a Georgian offensive on the Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Now Russian troops have crossed the border into South Ossetia.

In the past, Georgian troops have proven incapable of standing up to the Russians. In 1993, I watched as the Russians rolled over the Georgians in Abkhazia. The result was the near-dismemberment of Georgia itself.

That is the possible consequence of today's events. Only this time Georgia is far more important to the West -- in 1993, there were no trans-Georgian oil pipelines.

If the conflict escalates into Georgia itself, look for oil prices to escalate. And look for NATO to decide how to respond.

Putin: Still in Pursuit of Respect

How far will Vladimir Putin push his rejection of Kosovo independence? My own feeling is not very. And even if he does go through with his implicit threat -- to recognize breakaway regions of his favorite punching bag, Western ally Georgia -- Russia and perhaps Belarus will probably be the only nations to do so.

President Bush has announced U.S. recognition of Kosovo, which unilaterally declared independence yesterday. The largest European countries are likely to follow. Why? Because of Serbia's murderous rampage through Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Putin asserts that territorial integrity is supreme and that, in order to create a separate nation, the country from which it is separating must approve. As an example, he cites the two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which pulled away during the early 1990s when nationalism was sweeping through the former Soviet Union.

There are only academic and polemical links between these Georgian regions and Kosovo.

I covered the Abkhaz fighting from both sides. While there was brutality, the scale nowhere approached Serbia's pathological violence against its neighbors. And in the end, in 1993, it was the Abkhaz -- backed by Moscow -- who applied ethnic cleansing after vowing not to. They simply put the Georgians in their midst on foot out of the seaside region, and occupied their homes.

One thing I learned from my time in the former Soviet Union is that pride is king when it comes to nationalities. No one wants to feel he or she are under anyone's thumb. In the case of the Abkhaz and the Ossets, the Georgians stirred the pot with their own nationalism. Then the Russians came in with military backing, which continues to this day.

What are Putin's and Russia's genuine beef? That their view isn't accepted in the West. Ultimately, that isn't very compelling. Putin will no doubt continue to protest. And, regarding Georgia as the West's soft underbelly because of the energy pipelines running through the republic and the West's backing for President Mikheil Saakashvili, he'll keep punching there.

Photo: C+H
Rights: Creative Commons

Domino Bluff in the Caucasus

There is important wisdom in a passage of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s new Journals, contained in a New York Times review posted today. It involves a post-mortem of the Cuban Missile Crisis by President Kennedy, as recounted by JFK's in-house intellectual.

The Times says: Schlesinger writes that Kennedy resisted seeing the missile crisis as part of a holy war with the Soviets. “Too many people will think now that all we have to do in dealing with the Russians is to kick them in the balls,” he says, after the Soviets back down. “I think there is a law of equity in these disputes. When one party is clearly wrong, it will eventually give way.” Read review

This is sharp counsel in the West's current standoff with Russia in former Yugoslavia. Eight years after halting Serbia's murderous assaults on its Balkan neighbors at Kosovo, the West supports finally recognizing the ethnic Albanian region's status as an independent nation.

The date set for that recognition is Dec. 10.

President Putin vehemently opposes Kosovo independence unless it's in agreement with its former aggressor, Serbia. He argues that, short of such an accord, uncontrollable warfare will re-ignite to the east in the former Soviet Union, specifically in the breakaway Georgian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Balderdash. Putin's angst has nothing to do with a highly principled nightmare of dominoes falling and everything to dowith who calls the shots in Russia's claimed sphere of influence.

Putin's own intellectual cadre assert that Abkhazia and South Ossetia rose up in response to Georgian genocide. It is true that indefensible Georgian nationalism at the time is to blame for triggering the separatist revolts of the early 1990s. But what followed was inflamed and assisted by then-Russian siloviki only too happy to give the upstart Georgians a black eye.

Those events are not equatable with Serbia's ethnic cleansing.

Instead, Putin and his brain trust are making an empty threat. Putin no more than the Georgians wishes to re-ignite instability in the Caucasus.

Dominoes will not fall of their own accord in response to Kosovo any more than they did when the other parts of the former Yugoslavia became independent. Neither will Putin manufacture a cause-and-effect.

While Putin chooses to see issues like Kosovo as a humiliating physical blow, they are rather simpler matters. Most of the former Yugoslav provinces long ago chose not to be joined to Serbia any longer. Kosovo is merely the latest.